You are browsing the archive for THE TRIUMPH OF THE RATFUCKERS.

Europe’s division in its main regions is not coincidental or irrelevant from the main religions and ethnic groups that comprise our continent. There are historic and cultural explanations of why certain regions are rated better than others on economic or social grounds.

Capitalism has been our political system since it prevailed after WW2 in the half of our continent. Later with the fall of communism it expanded into the other half and that was an extremely welcomed development. But over the years Capitalism has evolved from something that everybody wanted into something that many are skeptical about.

Over the past few years and with the crisis throughout Europe exposing the weaknesses of this political and economic system, people even from former communist nations are realizing that something is not quite working in Capitalist Europe. The inequalities among the nations and the classes are great and the system needs to be revisited.

What we are experiencing right now are the consequences of the type of Capitalism that was very popular during the ’80s and the Reagan-Thatcher legacy. The neo-liberal ideology on industry, way of doing business and worker’s rights, that is only getting worse due to globalization and the entry into the global market and field of politics of the developing economies with their millions of consumers. […]

As the Reign Of The Morons enters its third day, let us pause for a moment to pay tribute to a political visionary whose entire career presaged the current moment, anticipating the essential dynamic in play in Washington right now in all of its petulant, kindergartenish glory. Let us raise a morning glass to Donald Segretti, the ratfucker.

(As any student of Watergate knows, “ratfucking” was the word used by Segretti and a number of other officials in the Nixon White House for the dirty tricks they ran in student elections when they all were at the University of Southern California. Segretti — as well as his pal, Dwight Chapin — simply transferred these techniques to our national elections.)

There are two basic philosophical foundation stones to ratfucking. The first is that political sabotage for its own sake is a worthy enough goal. There doesn’t necessarily have to be an obvious purpose or obvious logic behind it. Everything is simply tactics. Those tactics either work or they don’t. To believe this, of course, one must first believe that all politics is a essentially a zero-sum game of power; you win and the other guy loses. Who rules? Period. One cannot for a moment contemplate the notion that politics — and therefore, government — has anything to do with the public good. I trust I don’t have to spell out the parallels between this elemental basis of ratfucking and what the Republicans are about in their current campaign of vandalism. This has now entered a time in which we are seeing sabotage for sabotage’s own sake. Remember, the conservative rump faction has brought this shutdown upon the country because its members refuse to agree to a federal budget that contains lower discretionary spending than even Paul Ryan contemplated. That’s because now — as Congressman Marlin Stutzman pointed out clearly yesterday — this isn’t about the budget, or even about economics, it’s about who wins and who loses. It’s about whether or not John Boehner, the castrato Speaker Of The House, can keep his job. The public, as was said during our previous Gilded Age, be damned. […]

Public opinion is going through a major change. The combination of the collapsed and languishing economy; and people standing up and speaking about taboo subjects out loud is creating a new political narrative.

The Brookings Institution, a mainstay of Washington, DC think tanks, found that 42% of Americans do not think capitalism is working for the United States. Only 9% believe capitalism is working very well. The only age group that thinks they are better off than the previous generation is those over 66 years old.

Questioning capitalism? When was the last time that was allowed in US political discourse?

And, Americans’ view of government is mostly negative. Only 7% think it is generally working while two-thirds think it is either completely broken (26%) or broken but working in some areas (40%). Americans want government to reduce the wealth divide (63%), provide assistance to people who need it (62%) and guarantee health care to all even if it means raising taxes (56%). Obviously, government is out of step with the people; moving in the opposite direction on all these issues. The discord between what the people want and need; and what government is doing is the foundation of the growing resistance movement. […]

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